The scandalous, selfish demands we make on our children
The smallest and most powerless have been the biggest victims of COVID-19 in America
In 1985, Sting released a song in which he hoped “the Russians love their children too.” At the time, we were at the height of the Cold War. Glasnost had yet to take hold, and with the aggressive posturing on both sides of the Atlantic, we legitimately feared for the survival of the human species. Sting, however, didn’t buy the demonization of the Soviets. How could they want to destroy the world, he reasoned, because they must love their children as we do.
Nowadays though, it is not the Russians whose love for their children I wonder about. Instead, it is our American children, imprisoned in their homes to protect older folks from a pandemic, being left a world that we have used and abused.
My wife brought this fact home to me today when she told me that she believed that our grandson Lukas was depressed. My response was not surprise. Instead I responded “of course he is.”
Our beautiful, kind, loving 5-year old grandson who has been living with us has spent the last few months imprisoned in his home with a couple of old people. He is very athletic and social, but rather than playing with his friends in the schoolyard, he has to listen to classes over Zoom and jump on an indoor trampoline. It is no life for a 5-year old.
In his school, the children had been required to wear masks, and indeed they complied fully with that requirement. But yet his school shut down anyway, not because COVID had become a problem there, but because our county had a big spike in infections following the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
Teachers’ unions have argued that they should not be required to return to the classroom until they have been vaccinated. It is hard to argue with their logic. Teachers are essential workers who are underpaid and ill-treated in our society. Should they be putting their lives at risk? And yet, the people who pay the price for their caution are the children, many like my grandson who are too young to get any real benefit from online teaching. It’s not fair.
But yet this behavior by our society should not be surprising. We mouth platitudes…
